Members organize for workplace safetyEmergency call light system repaired after a march on city hall

PostOctober 7, 2015

Thanks to the efforts of Local 1000 members advocating for
patient safety at Salinas Valley State Prison (SVSP), the
long-broken emergency call light system there has been repaired.

Call lights, which alert nurses on duty to an emergency need of
an inmate patient, have been broken for several years. The
prison’s stopgap solution has been to assign a nurse to walk
between rooms and visibly check for inmates in distress; that
practice leaves about 15 life-threatening minutes between checks
at current staffing levels. After their demands for a fix went
unheeded by management, Local 1000 members at SVSP took action to
get the call lights repaired. They took their concerns to
Assemblymember Luis Alejo and Soledad Vice Mayor Alejandro Chavez
and marched on Soledad City Hall.

“The repair of the call lights is a victory for the care of our
patients,” said Nick Mannion, DLC 741 chief steward and an LVN at
SVSP. “This happened because our members saw a problem and took
action.”

But the call light repair is only part of the work the state
needs to do: mandatory overtime and excessive workloads continue
to threaten safety for patients and staff. Margarita Maldonado,
vice president for bargaining, says easing the punishing
schedules and patient loads of our RNs LVNs and CNAs is a top
priority for the union.

“Getting the call lights finally fixed was a big win,” Maldonado
said. “Local 1000 will continue the fight for patient safety and
better working conditions for our members.”